Post-New Orleans, seeking po' boy highs back home

November 11, 2010|By Kevin Pang, The Cheap Eater

It turns out, po' boys I've sampled heretofore were outright shams. This was less a reflection on the offending restaurants serving me sacrilege than poor judgment on my behalf. I mean, the nerve to order a po' boy outside Louisiana!

Which was why a recent food trip to New Orleans left me with memories so vivid, I could still feel the roast beef gravy ooze from the bread and run down my wrist.

The restaurant was Domilises in the city's Uptown neighborhood, and it reminded me of Hot Doug's — shortage of chairs, single line out the door, a one-specialty-many-variations cult restaurant. Here they don't just serve a standard roast beef sandwich, no, but a holy union with the other po' boy protein of choice: fried shrimp. Briny, sweet and toothsome, these Gulf shrimps were fried crispy into perfectly imperfect abstract knots, then doused with a viscous, brown-with-a-sheen, philosophical discussion-inducing roast beef gravy. How could something so sloppy feel so right?

I suppose po' boys are just a regional name for what's called a submarine, hero or grinder elsewhere, but there are its traits. You wouldn't find soft-shell crab or crawfish hoagie in Philly, and asking for Creole mustard and beef-studded "debris gravy" would be met with blank stares.

Accounts of the po' boys' origin, even its correct spelling, will differ depending on the street corner you ask. Me, I'll go with Sara Roahen's version in her book "Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table." She credits brothers Bennie and Clovis Martin, who in the 1920s fed striking streetcar workers potato and gravy sandwiches on French bread. There was dual meaning in the name "poor boys": The strikers lost wages, and the sandwiches were made from the cheapest ingredients.

Further guidance came from the affable Judy Walker, food editor at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. She told me the most important element of a po' boy is the New Orleans French bread, which should have a crisp, sturdy exterior that flakes onto the tabletop and a soft interior to soak up juices. There's the "dressing," which typically means four things: lettuce, tomatoes, dill pickle slices, mayo. Crystal hot sauce is optional and suggested.

Soon after returning to Chicago, the shakes developed. Po' boy withdrawal, no doubt. Then I started hearing things. The crunch of crisp bread collapsing unto itself was a tell-tale heart, refusing to fade from my ears.

The cure for this malady involved risk: a po' boy binge. Nothing but, for 72 Bacchanalian hours. I saw two outcomes: emerge sated or scarred, like getting caught with a cigarette and dad forcing you to smoke the entire carton as punishment.

The name of 10 area restaurants serving po' boys in hand, I trekked to places such as The Big Easy in Hyde Park, The Local Option in Lincoln Park, Shanahan's in Forest Park and Blue Bayou Bar & Grill in Lakeview.

Only three came close to replicating the sloppy glory I found in The Big Easy.

Heaven on Seven

In the dozen times I've sampled Jimmy Bannos' po' boy, not once had I attempted to pick it up with bare hands. It's not so much a sandwich as shrimp splayed on two-dimensional bread, more aesthetics than structurally practical. So you lose some of the tactile pleasures by using a fork and knife, but piece by piece, you construct: a base of slightly toasted and chewy Turano bread, a few shreds of head lettuce, a wedge of Roma tomato, a Horseshoe hot-sauce-marinated fried shrimp, a dab of honey-jalapeno dressing. It all seems a bit formal skewered on a fork, but it's sweet and crisp and hot in the same way fried chicken, waffles, maple syrup and hot sauce taste spectacular as a collective bite.

Opt for the fried shrimp and oyster po' boy (known in Louisiana as The Peacemaker, so named because men who caroused late into the night offered this sandwich as an olive branch to the fairer sex). Its seasoning is simply salt, pepper and cayenne pepper; the hallmark here is the corn flour batter, which fries smoother and crunchier than corn meal without the granular texture. The portions are generous, and a few wayward pieces of seafood will surely tumble from the flaky D'Amato roll. Dressing is standard — tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, mayo and Crystal hot sauce, though the sight of red onions might cause purists to recoil ("An aberration," noted the Times-Picayune's Judy Walker). But I couldn't tell the difference.

Why do some chefs insist on adding their own twist to every dish? With po' boys, Allen Rochelle Jr., a Louisiana native who hails from New Iberia, home of Tabasco sauce, won't dare fix what ain't broke. The shrimp po' boy at his new Bronzeville restaurant, Le Fleur de Lis, is a straight-no-chaser rendition that nails its execution. Crisp Turano roll is first toasted with garlic butter. Gulf shrimp, marinated with buttermilk and Tabasco, are aggressively seasoned with Cajun spicing and fried with flour and corn meal into an angry orange hue. The sweet remoulade lends richness against the cool tomato slices. The French fries were limp and soggy, but everything else textually was a 10.